Category: Nintendo

Potentially gillions of images featuring Mario and his cohorts have been mechanically pressed to sheets of sticky goo over the decades. But no matter how they may glisten or sniff they’ll never top these Donkey Kong stickers from 1982. I only remember the stickers but according to The Gaming Historian they came in packs of Topps Donkey Kong trading cards. The stickers and gum were obviously my favorite part as I don’t remember what a single one of the cards looked like.

I auditioned and was hired as a new model for Rising Star, but I don’t just model because that wouldn’t really be enough for a video game. They also have me choose outfits and do nail design. After you do that you do a page layout for a magazine which is like designing photos in something like LINE Camera using frames & stickers which I already love doing (examples 1, 2, 3).

Unlike SST (Style Savvy Trendsetters) there doesn’t seem to be a day cycle. You can keep going around in the infinite daytime doing things like buying makeup, clothes and new poses. The only thing that seemed to show time passing was when I completed the 3 jobs that were available for the month. The time change afterwards from April to May just seemed like a new day change in SST.

There are other models at the agency that you’re being ranked against, but they all want to be friends with you (this isn’t an American reality show). You can check your rank and read your fan mail! I received 2 so far and I admit they made me smile even if they are just game generated compliments. You guys, I am someone’s favorite model!

After you complete a job you can export the photo from your cellphone album. Below are three I did yesterday following the given themes they specify. I’m not far into it yet, but I will say that unless it surprises me down the line, I don’t think this game will appeal to everyone who loved SST. If anything sways me from that I will come back and post about it here, but if you just wanna see my future quips and images from it follow me on Google+.

While VR constantly seems on the verge of exploding into the next big thing, AR continues to be a seldom seen diversion. I blame it on cameras: the Vita and 3DS have the worst cameras but that’s where interesting AR games keep happening.

The latest is the one you see above, Bubble Pop World, out now on the 3DS eShop for $4.99. For all the flashy features the video shows they don’t really explain how the main puzzle-popping mechanic works. It seems to be a mix of Bust-a-Move and Poppit! with the ability to move around the 3D model and insert the next colored blob wherever you’d like.

It’s got 120 puzzle and arcade levels built in with the ability to create and share your own via QR codes (another maligned AR technology!) as well as 8 underwater themed minigames. I’ve still got some cash left in my Mario Wallet (or whatever they call it on the eShop); I may have to give this a shot!

Darting to Club Nintendo this morning after the reveal of that super sweet Luigi sculpture (which still isn’t on the site) I noticed Nintendo was offering a humble little game called Starship Defense at a discount. I somehow missed this on DSiWare back in 2010 but it’s a quaint, stark looking tower defense game published by Nintendo and developed by Pixeljunk proprietor, Q-Games.

How did I miss this!? Oh, it was on DSiWare, that’s probably how. Anyone out there played it by chance? I’m intrigued but still pretty cool on tower defense games.

Across five releases over the last sixteen years Climax’s Runabout series has stuck to its own inexplicable genre. Wacky Mission-Based Arcade Racer? Multi-Objective Driving Adventure? Vaguely Open-World Pedestrian Criticism Simulator? Stylistically it embodies everything a boy could love about 90’s anime: absurd and thin plots that require lots of fast driving, ridiculous stunts and millions of dollars in property damage. Crash City Mayhem definitely holds true to the series style but it also sticks to its gameplay at the risk of completely confounding modern players.

Unrelated to anything in the previous games, you play as an ex-spy-turned-courier who gets mixed up in a plot to steal an outlandish spy car. Across six missions you find intel on the car, wind up stealing it, tail a female spy who’s after it herself and ultimately save the day and get the girl. The plotline is only slightly more nuanced than a “three guys walk into a bar” joke but it’s all the setup the game needs.

Once the mission starts you’re off on a high speed race to reach whatever objective markers the stage prescribes. All six missions are set in the same world with barricades and starting points that keep it feeling different but familiar. It’s a good thing, really, as there are loads of shortcuts and alternate routes that only make sense on certain missions. It’s far from an open world but there’s enough breadth to keep you wondering if each side street offers a faster path to your destination.

Many of the 15 vehicles you unlock are novelties like the tank and scooter but all handle uniquely enough to suit your driving/crashing style. In a particularly specific callback to the original game you can even fine tune handling, downforce and brakes to tailor each vehicle’s performance. You steer with the circle pad or D-pad and pretty much every button can be remapped for manual shifting, rear view, gas, brakes and handbrake. There’s a good sense of speed that sometimes hitches the framerate and physics as realistic as you’d like for a game where an F1 car can plow into a city bus and send the wreckage flying.

Playing all six missions in a row would take less than hour so the game abruptly reveals its dark secret to meter your progress: missions are unlocked as you complete old ones on harder difficulty levels. There are five difficulties for each mission, the first three giving you slightly less time or requiring more targets to be found. Finding hidden bonus icons and breaking jump, speed and property damage records help unlock new missions and difficulties. You’ll also unlock 20 items to equip that add goofy trinkets like a musical horn to your car or really useful things like a jump or nitro. The combination of vehicles and items add just enough variety to deaden the sting of grinding missions. Who wouldn’t crack up at the sight of a guy on an “H-David” motorcycle wearing a panda hat that conceals a smaller panda hat underneath? The engrish, the screams of overly-critical pedestrians and the unyielding surf rock tunes are hallmarks of the series and great at defusing your frustrations.

Those frustrations run highest on the Impossible and Legendary difficulties requiring you to complete the mission objectives while also causing $1,000,000 in damage or no damage whatsoever. Causing damage is like a vehicular Price is Right game; managing your damage versus dollars, looking for just the right things to hit without going over. Causing no damage at all is definitely the game’s most punishing challenge. The H-David bike is required for this one but even with its slimmer frame the 3DS’ tiny screen and the game’s draw-in cause some unfair failures. Sitting through a drawn out loading screen and mission intro every time you restart doesn’t help either.

Climax’s adherence to the Runabout style is appreciable as a fan but sixteen years on it isn’t making itself very approachable to anyone else. The peculiar genre is unlike anything in recent memory to draw comparisons to and the slapdash feel of the series — which was tolerable, even endearing in the 90’s — looks shoddy nowadays. Even I had a hard time getting back into the groove of things but I wound up having about sixteen hours of fun, frustration and nostalgia with Crash City Mayhem. I’d rather have played it on a console but the portable platform and $20 price (at retail or on the eShop) seems like the best way to dip a curious toe into this long-running and obscure series.

I don’t think I’ll record much more but I posted a few videos of the game on YouTube if this text still doesn’t explain well enough.

On this week’s Giant Bombcast the gang was talking about what it would take for each of them to buy a Wii U. As I don’t care for most of what Nintendo’s selling these days and third-party support is all but dead I started to wonder myself. I’m tired of Mario This and Mario That. Even the ‘Year of Luigi’, starring my long-time favorite brother, hasn’t been enough to get me to buy, well, any of Nintendo’s games. So here’s three quick responses, right from the heart.

Wave RaceWhat I need is a new Wave Race, one with water on par with the original. It was practically an opponent itself and being able to use momentum to force yourself underwater to shave lap times was brilliant stuff that still hasn’t been matched. I’d even tolerate tilt-only controls just to be able to catch a wave at its peak to go soaring over a blockade and into first place.

PilotwingsArchery and golf (even swordplay and frisbee) were fun for a while but where I spent the most time in Wii Sports Resort was flying around Wuhu Island. Searching for “points of interest” and shooting balloons were more interesting than I expected but there is something deeply satisfying about exploring that island. So basically I want a new Pilotwings with more aerial diversions and a bigger, livelier island to explore. Just off the top of my head I’d like the balancing act of using the GamePad to fly but also having to hold it upright and use it as a camera to take specific photos.

Something UnexpectedThe GamePad is a streaming handheld with motion sensors, cameras, a microphone, and loads of buttons that’s capable of running games concurrent with what’s on the TV. There are ideas there that I can’t comprehend, that no one to date has really pulled together. If Nintendo could get iOS developers on board there’s no telling what we’d see. Don’t get all pissy, I hate touchscreen gaming (a lot) but there have been some really clever, highly original iOS games over the past five years that are only possible with that kind of hardware. The potential is huge but the deluge remains dammed.

After today’s Nintendo Direct it seems like my personal system sellers are far, far off if they ever happen at all. And that’s fine, I’m not trying to be down on Nintendo or the Wii U and I have no pro-Sony/Microsoft agenda. Jeff asked what it would take and that’s my answer.

Last night I disassembled what I think might be my childhood NES. Much more yellow than I remember, my Dad was still holding onto it and a box of controllers, RF cables and power bricks. I picked it up from him a few months ago but it wasn’t until I set up the new Capture Cart™ this past weekend that I finally decided to see if the thing worked.

It didn’t. I got a series of colorful screens from Super Mario Bros. 2 and Batman looked mostly fine except for a weird ghost layer of pixels, like the image was being partially duplicated. It looked awesome, but not right. So I took to Instagram with a video of Batman and got the suggestion to clean the pins. Then I… wait, which pins? The cartridge? That’s not the problem…

A quick Google search led me to Dan Mahlendorf’s guide on refurbishing an NES. For as many mods and tributes to the NES that I’ve seen over the years I’ve never opened one up and looked around inside. Not surprisingly it’s pretty simple inside, had a few abandoned cobwebs in the corners and was loaded with screws. Screws on the case, screws on the RF shield, screws on the cartridge housing.

Finally I was down to the pin connector which I needed to remove by bending the circuit board ever so gently enough to slide it off. As the guide says, it was a little tricky but I got it off, cleaned it out and started examining the pins. They all look to be at the same height and are still springy but one of them on the left side is maybe missing a prong. I did what I could to bend the rest of it back up, struggled for a while getting the connector back onto the circuit board and dashed upstairs to see if it helped.

It did. Super Mario Bros. 2 works fine now but maybe glitches out hard one out of a dozen times? I only saw it once but it was a glorious moment when Peach hit a Shy Guy and the game world around their sprites deteriorated into a colorful, noisy Hell. I imagine it has destroyed everything they thought they knew about their world but it’s a bonus for me getting to watch the NES circuit bend itself at random.

And now I’ve got an NES that works so I could justify buying some games. I’m only interested in collecting complete packages but the next time I’m at the shops I might pick up some cheap cartridges.

Seeing how Katy’s open plea to Harmonix to make a K-Pop Dance Central continues to be one of our most active posts I figured it was our civic duty to talk about K-Pop Dance Festival. Developed by Skonec, it’s a very Just Dance-like game with vividly colored live action dancers showing you the moves to mimic with the Wii remote.

It was released exclusively in Korea for the Wii at the end of April and I expected to buy it as soon as it popped up on Amazon or Play-Asia… only it never did. I dug around again this morning and haven’t been able to find it anywhere outside of a lone listing on eBay at $50. Then I dug a little more and was reminded that the Wii is region locked.

That makes for a pretty hefty barrier to entry but we can at least check out the tracklist below and Skonec has been posting videos pretty regularly on their YouTube channel of the songs in the game and people playing it.

So I got some 3DS cash for Christmas and I’m pokin’ around the featured categories on the eShop yesterday and I see “The Best of 2012” and figure I’ll take a look. ‘Oh wow, Dillon’s Rolling Western was a 2012 release?’, I think. ‘Oh right, Sakura Samurai, that looked pretty cool and maybe — wait, what!?’, I’m interrupted mid-thought as I’m suddenly seeing Super Mario Bros., a Sonic the Hedgehog game for Game Gear, a handful of Game Boy games and even Metroid! Yes, the red hot new release from 1986 which did come out on the 3DS eShop in 2012 but completely does not count for a “best of the year” list. I also take odds with Colors 3D and Petit Computer which are more productivity apps than games.

Oh Nintendo. On one hand they’re pioneering Day One digital releases for retail games and on the other they’re saying a ROM dump of Super Mario Bros. is one of the best 3DS games of 2012. Is this list based on sales? User ratings? Who knows, but if Bird Mania 3D makes the cut then surely there were enough ports of hidden object and iOS games to fill out this list without dipping into Virtual Console releases. Anyways, there is some good stuff worth looking into on this list so check out all 25 entries below.(more…)

$99.99. Canada exclusive. Holiday season only. No internet functionality. No GameCube support. It’s a sexxy red/black color combo. It’s a toploader. No confirmation it’ll ever make it out of Canada or be produced after this holiday season.

Only a few of those points mean anything to me but none of them are convincing enough to bother talking about further. Ok, it’s a toploader and I really like top loading consoles. The colors are also awesome.